There’s Been A Dramatic Change Since Our First New Year’s Celebration

MassNews celebrated the beginning of a new century in January 2000 with pictures of a great fireworks display over Boston and with new goals and aspirations. It amazes everyone how some of those objectives have started to come to fruition after only two years.

January 2002

Wow! What a dramatic change in Massachusetts since our first New Year’s Celebration at the beginning of the year in 2000.

Some people used to say that MassNews was depressing and it repeated the same bad news over and over, but you supporters could see what was happening.

You gave us the encouragement and strength we needed to shine a spotlight on our society.

For the first time in decades, we have a newspaper in Massachusetts that will tell the truth. Many people don’t want to know the truth. It makes them uncomfortable. But you have a passion to know. That is why we have been so successful.

We’re a little different than Rush Limbaugh. We think he is great, but we also see a serious downside that was disastrous to the country. Rush is first and foremost an entertainer. Therefore, he enjoyed playing Bill Clinton as a buffoon and laughing at him. That may have been fun, but it didn’t portray Clinton as the very capable and dangerous person he was. Howie Carr does much the same in our state.

The people of Massachusetts tend to do the same with the Boston Globe. We laugh at its bias but we don’t realize how dangerous it is to have one group of people controlling almost everything we learn. If the Globe doesn’t report it, it didn’t happen.

We see three troubled teens in New Bedford who planned to kill classmates and teachers in their high school. But we do not see the feminist author, Dr. William Pollack, being rushed in from Harvard Medical School to tell everyone that all boys are sick.

Perhaps the people of the state are just beginning to understand that our men and women must work together. We will no longer be divided into two warring camps.

He was being interviewed by ABC Radio News on a “live chat” following his appearance on 20/20. The announcer for the “chat” began it this way: “More boys are being raised by single mothers in the United States than in any other country in the world. What impact does the absence of a father have on a boy’s development? Child psychologist Dr. William Pollack says moms can provide much of what a boy needs from his father.”

The Pollack mantra changed in June of 2001 when we “repeated” our interest in him with “yet another story” which revealed that the “research” which made him famous occurred at Belmont Hill School and was very suspect.

Since our June report, Dr. William Pollack seems to have disappeared. His website, which had listed about four appearances every week all across the country in May and June has been totally abandoned. Nothing on it has been updated since that time. And Harvard Medical will not talk about him. That does not mean that the virus at Harvard has gone, but it is muted a bit.

We are all aware that the New Bedford boys were being raised by single mothers and at least one of the boys was very angry about it.

We get no satisfaction out of any ill luck to Pollack but it is great to see that the terrible message from him and Harvard Medical School has been challenged.

Chief Justice Margaret Marshall’s husband, Anthony Lewis, is leaving the New York Times, where he has been writing rabid columns for years.

At this time a year ago, we wrote about him in an Editorial concerning his wife which had the following headline, “Chief Justice of SJC Is Rabid Feminist.”

We wrote, “We realize that it is not ‘chic’ to believe that husbands and wives influence each other. But Marshall’s husband, Anthony Lewis, is so ultra-left that it is impossible to believe that this woman does not share some of his personal philosophy. He is the premiere columnist for the New York Times which owns the Boston Globe.”

We continued by saying that if she also has beliefs like his, “It’s going to be difficult to contain yourself when you’re deciding some of the issues before our courts, like whether or not the Constitution allows children to be torn from their parents by bureaucrats without any hearings whatsoever.”

In this current issue of MassNews, we talk about a highly partisan, political column by Lewis which could damage our troops in Afghanistan. (Our article was on our website in early December.) “How can the NYTimes/

BostonGlobe lecture us about ‘trust’”, we wonder, “when it lobbied heavily for the appointment and confirmation of Margaret Marshall to be Chief Justice of our Supreme Judicial Court? It never revealed during that time the enormous conflict of interest it had in that her husband was in their employ.”

Did this type of revelation by MassNews have anything to do with Lewis’ retirement? We will never know. But we do know he was not happy to be leaving the Times. In our article in this issue we lament his outrageous political partisanship when our country is at war. One must imagine that many other people across the country also saw it and the accumulated pressure became too great to keep him on – both for the New York Times and for Margaret Marshall.

Although there is no announcement about his retirement in the archives of the Times, the Boston Globe ran a story on December 5, reporting that Lewis said the decision was “a joint decision of myself and the publisher.”

A classic example of the writing from his columns was, “People across the country, opponents and supporters both, are learning something that Massachusetts has understood for some time. Never underestimate the intelligence or determination of Michael Dukakis.”

We will be happy to see his partisan voice gone but his negative influence on the Chief Justice will continue.

You astounded everyone but yourselves with the results. You made it absolutely clear that you alone want to be deciding the important social issues. If the voters wish to change marriage from what it has always meant in the state, that is their decision. And you will abide by their decision. But you will not tolerate politicians making those decisions for you – whether the politicians are in the legislature or in the courts.

No one thought you would be successful in getting that initiative on the ballot. But you were. It is a remarkable change for Massachusetts.

We haven’t won yet. The opposition plans to hemorrhage us because they are desperate not to let you and other voters decide.

But with the leadership of Mass. Citizens for Marriage, Mass. Family Institute and many other groups and people, we will continue that battle.

All of the problems that we saw at the dawn of the century in January 2000 are still with us. And they will continue to be with us at the beginning of the next century because they are universal problems that were here in 1776 and always are present in all human societies.

Running a democracy means constant vigilance. It’s much like weeding a vegetable garden. The weeds are always there and you dare not stop hoeing. If you stop, they will take over.

However, we must all keep repeating that over and over because in our daily struggles, we get so mired in the mud and dirt that we forget. Some people get discouraged and turn back. We must climb a tree now and then and chart how far we’ve gone and where we are headed.

We’ve not solved the problems of what the extremists are teaching our children in the schools about sex, but we’ve made remarkable progress.

When we look at our schools, it is apparent that some of our teachers are people who enjoy talking dirty with children. They used to be the guy in a trench coat. Now they have degrees and lots of prestige.

But we helped to expose them at Fistgate after Scott Whiteman and Brian Camenker taped what happened there so the “teachers” could never deny it. Then Jeanine Graf broadcast the news every day on her talk show.

Some people got angry with us. Our publisher discussed with his wife and many others whether we should report the explicit language that was taught to very young teenagers in Massachusetts. We all agreed that we had to tell the citizens what was happening. After all, this was being taught to children as young as 12-years. Perhaps we shouldn’t have told it, but how else would the people ever learn what was happening to their children and grandchildren?

And when the activists got Judge Allan van Gestel to put a ban on the tapes so that you wouldn’t find out, the entire scandal would have died if MassNews, which was exempt from the judge’s ruling as a part of the press, had not offered to send a free tape to anyone. We’ve sent thousands of tapes all across the country.

The activists are lamenting the terrible “damage” they suffered as a result of Fistgate. We have not stopped them and we never will. There have always been and always will be those who wish to prey on the young and innocent.

But we have made the people of Massachusetts more aware. There is almost no one who has not heard of Fistgate.

Almost everyone is beginning to understand that there is a moderate position in between 1) hating and assaulting homosexuals and 2) accepting and teaching that their foolish lifestyle as a wonderful role for children to accept. Even most homosexuals understand and accept that, but the activists will pretend that they don’t.

There is practically no one anywhere in the entire country who hates and assaults them, but the activists like to pretend there are. The town of Concord even held a rally against “hate” in their town in 1999 although they never had a single incident there.

The activists will yell and scream at the analogy between them and cigarette smokers but only because they can not refute it. We do not understand our friends who are cigarette smokers but they are still our friends. Regardless, we do not want them being paid by the schools to teach our children that smoking is a wonderful lifestyle they should all try. Neither do we want our homosexual friends to be doing that. And most of them understand fully.

We would like to be doing much more on the economic issues but we need additional money and staff to accomplish that.

The Beacon Hill Institute and the Pioneer Institute are both doing excellent work for Massachusetts but it is not being reported enough in the media. Someone should do human interest stories about the “dry” numbers that they report. They are not “dry” at all but most people do not understand how this impacts their lives. Even we at MassNews do not know because we do not have the staff that is necessary to do all this. The outreach of these two fine groups goes more to the business leaders, but they must also include the general public and the social conservatives if they hope to increase their impact.

Our publisher spent years researching and writing his book about the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and how it is damaging our economy, mostly the people it is supposed to be helping, black people and women. But he has not had the time or space to write about that in MassNews. Many of our corporations fled overseas because of that law. Who could blame them? But almost no one realizes it.

We have no idea how many people were reached with our message, “Average Mother Works to Pay Taxes.” This is so important. Most people do not realize that the average mother today is working only to earn the taxes that her family is required to pay. In 1950, the tax burden on a typical American family from all levels of government was about 5% of annual income. By 1997, that had jumped to about 40%. This means that the average mother is working only to pay her family’s taxes. We should be getting that message to more people than we have. Despite what politicians say, tax relief is not for the top 1% of Americans. It is for everyone, particularly families.

It would be great to help the Libertarians in the state on their proposal to eliminate the income tax. But someone needs to “flesh it out” before it can really be viable. Someone like the Beacon Hill Institute has to determine what this would do to our real estate taxes. The proposal on the federal level to do away with income taxes is a very responsible one with sales taxes taking their place. Too bad it got lost in the Newt Gingrich debacle. It is self evident that Carla Howell needs money to help answer the important questions which she ignores if this is ever to become anything more than symbolic.

We should be pointing out how the minimum wage is destroying black youth by forbidding them from working at low levels as an assistant to learn a trade. As Prof. Walter Williams points out, the courts should be enforcing the “right to work” as much as the “right to free speech.” He also indicates that the minimum wage device is used most often in South Africa. Even the New York Times agrees that every time we’ve raised it, more young black people lost their jobs.

Pioneer is doing good work on this with their Center for Entrepreneurship which encourages low income urban residents to become independent by starting their own businesses.

We should be doing much more on education. We’ve done excellent stories on phonics and “fuzzy math” but we should be doing ongoing features on these subjects. We’ve written some good features on MCAS, but more must be done.

The average parent does not realize that it is the teachers that run the schools today. When our schools were high quality, that wasn’t true. Our publisher was Chairman of the Teachers Committee in an excellent, elected, autonomous 10,000-pupil school district in York, Pennsylvania, in the early 1960s. There was talk at that time about allowing unions in the schools. It was obvious to everyone that all local control was “out the window” if we ever allowed this. It happened in Massachusetts in the 1970s when the unions were allowed in. Any dispute is now settled by a bureaucrat in Boston who is an “arbitrator.” That was why the state was forced to pay and/or rehire the Fistgate teacher who had been fired by the state’s Board of Education. An “impartial” bureaucrat awarded her backpay and her job back if she wanted it.

The Pioneer Institute is a leader in education, particularly in charter schools. They support public policies that encourage school choice, competition, and innovation and reward the pursuit of excellence in public education. We believe that would not be necessary if we removed the teacher unions and put the citizens back in charge of all schools, but that may not be possible.

Our courts are still an abomination. There are many good judges but there are too many that are not, particularly in the courts that affect our families. The best ones are in the courts where the business community must operate, but even there we see great dissatisfaction. There is a large industry of “mediation” and “arbitration” because the smart lawyers and their business clients realize that the courts are pretty much a disaster. They will not say so in public.

The Boston Bar Association which is composed of the silk-stocking firms which represent the rich corporations tell us about our “great” court system. But they stay as far away from it as they can. They ease their consciences by holding balls and giving money to radical “poverty lawyers” for the poor. But most of those lawyers have never seen a real courtroom.

We must make judges accountable in some way. There are problems in any method of selection because everyone and every method is flawed. But at the very least, all the judges should be re-approved by the voters every five years or so. That would help to keep them honest.

The story of Ken Newell’s children, the three children in the Howard family, the three Luisi children and many other families in our courts will not be forgotten as long as you continue to support us. We, Nev Moore, Chester Darling, and Brian Camenker get so many desperate calls constantly that we cannot keep up with them all. They make Oliver Twist seem like the tale of a privileged child.

What happened to Gov. Cellucci because of MassNews will make any politician sweat a little. When Cellucci was appointed as Ambassador to Canada, he almost did not make it because of the way he had ignored the voters over the Fistgate issue. It was only because he was a close, personal friend of Andy Card, the President’s Chief of Staff, that he finally got his confirmation. But he was humiliated in the process by being forced to give Sen. Helms an unprecedented, written pledge that he would follow the President’s policies.

This has to make any politician in the Commonwealth realize that things have changed. There is a new tiger on the block that should not be dismissed too quickly.

The outpouring of support for the marriage amendment also shows that things have changed politically.

The owners of guns should be receiving a lot more attention. We’ve written quite a few stories about the Gun Owners Action League. It is an excellent organization which should get even more of our attention.

The environment in our state has suffered but it appears that we are finally beginning to understand that we have severely damaged it while swallowing the rhetoric of the California-based Sierra Club. We have “saved” the environment in Alaska. But our own has became so bad that the EPA tells us that urban sprawl is a serious problem. We’ve chased all the farms out of the state and we get our food by jets from California, Florida and Mexico. What kind of fuel do we think those jets burn?

But we are beginning to see a change this year after our story in February 2001 showed how the concern for “low income housing” was allowing developers to destroy our pristine areas, all in the name of “goodness.”

Universal health care is becoming a serious threat. Although Hillary Clinton was severely rebuked by the voters when she attempted to impose it – even making it a crime to choose your own doctor – there are many attempts being made to impose it in this state. We must stay on top of that and make you realize when that it happening.

As a person who has worked with farmers much of his adult life, including time at Cornell and Pennsylvania State, our publisher is very much in favor of organic foods and stores like Bread and Circus. But the new owners of that chain also have a lot of hype in there and sell foods that the original Bread and Circus would never have done. We should do some stories on that.

We’ve written some extensive articles about Ritalin and the severe damage to children, mostly boys, that it causes, mainly because women teachers do not understand. We must continue to educate about the whole area of drugs, which are consuming so many adults and children.

This includes the mandatory hepatitis B shot which so severely damaged Ben Converse at his birth in the Falmouth Hospital. (The hepatitis B disease is no danger to any baby unless and until the kid shoots drugs or engages in sex.) We did not bring much change with the story, which was our feature in the first issue, but we know some children who have not yet received the shot because of our warning.

If any of you are still reading, we appreciate it. We know that we have left out many issues and hurt someone’s feelings. For that we will always be sorry. We hope you enjoyed it. We could write a lot more about the tremendous change and reform you have brought in this state. But enough is enough. Many thanks for your understanding and support.